Monday, December 11, 2006

Weblog Awards: Shut Out!

I could/should pull a Stephen Colbert and feign some outrage that I wasn't nominated for "Best Sports Blog" in the 2006 Weblog Awards. (More accurately, I should kick myself for not surreptitiously nominating myself. Next year... and I'll be sure to get you all to nominate me, too!)

Anyway, I wanted to point you to the link. There are a lot of great blogs that didn't make the list (so I don't feel TOO badly), but there are a couple of terrific ones that did, including Will and Co. at Deadspin, MJD, Jamie Mottram for Mr. Irrelevant, Henry Abbott for TrueHoop, and -- in quite an amazing development -- the hilarious deviants at Kissing Suzy Kolber.

In the comments, I'd love to hear which sports blogs are your favorites. (Cough! Cough!) You don't have to read them every day (cough! cough!) or have followed them over from a successful mainstream site (cough! cough!). Just ones you think are particularly well done. (I'm only kidding with the coughs, obvs.)

You don't post enough. AOL's new blog is good b/c they have a lot of writers so if your sitting in class bored like me you can check that. Deadspin is up there. The only person's blog who is written on less than yours is Cuban's so you better pick it up.

Dan:I think you could improve this blog in a few ways. They begin with getting off blogspot, which is really lacking in advanced features. If you need to pay some starving college student to manually copy information from here to wordpress, do it.

Next, admit your biases! The people who visit here who get really pissed (immature though they may be) really just miss the point that you are a blogger and not an AP sports reporter, so you are entitled to be a fan. Whenever you say something about your favorite team, don't veil it behind reason, because no true fan can. Just admit your homerism and then rant on. Some people may hate Bill Simmons' views, but none hate him for his views on the Red Sox or the Pats, because he is so candid in his bias.

Last, link to other sports blogs. It sounds like you read them, because sometimes you do link to them. People love having the coolest items for the day served to them on a silver platter, and sites like Deadspin, Fire Joe Morgan, Kissing Suzy Kolber, and many others, have good stuff that would only make you look better by association. If people knew they could come to your blog to get links to the best in sports blogging for the day (sorry, but it's not always gonna be you!), they will come to your blog more often.

The whole biases thing has gotten out of control. Being a Florida fan, I figured you would be against Michigan playing in the National Title Game (fair enough), but when the debate was going on, you refused to cover both sides. You provided a plethora of reasons for Florida, but didn't even attempt to take Michigan's case. It was so freaking one-sided. I've disagreed with a few of your opinions in the past, but I was never as frustrated as I was then. On top of that, you had the audacity to say you were sick of people complaining the NEXT DAY.

Mind you, had Florida been snubbed, you would have went to town with reasons why they should have been in the title game. I really refuse to believe otherwise.

That said, I still come here multiple times a day, and this is the only blog (besides Deadspin) that I check regularly. I loved the Quickie. My only suggestion is maybe...more pictures? I don't know. You do fine without them.

And I couldn't disagree more about the biase comments. Each columnist/blogger has natural baises based on where they're from, who they support, and who they hate. If that doesn't come out in your writing then you're holding back. I like the biased writing for the same reason I like reading blogs about my teams, by fans of my teams.

Although you are entitled to your bias, I agree completely (with bobbystompy) that it gets very ridiculous at times. I've had a few frustrating days reading because it just gets old after a while. Either go the inbiased route or add a disclaimer to spare me the 20 minute read about something that is fan-talk.

Sheesh, you guys are emotional. As someone completely unattached to college football (I'm a Syracuse fan) let me say he's not that bad. I think he's way more anti-Yankee, or that Bill Simmons is way more pro-Red Sox. Everyone has their bias, it's only on mainstream news sites that they aren't supposed to take sides.

Enjoy arguing against him, that's the point of blog comments, isn't it?

Connect With Me

Quickish

About This Blog

DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.